


just a bang-bang rolling off your tongue

by Scared_Beings_in_the_Dark



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Childhood, F/M, Family, Friendship, Future-ish Fic, Gen, angsty-fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-26 07:54:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3842947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scared_Beings_in_the_Dark/pseuds/Scared_Beings_in_the_Dark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bella and Sonny used to play cops and robbers all the time. Bella was always the cop and Sonny was always the robber.</p>
<p>All Bella ever had to do was point her stick gun at Sonny, say "Bang-bang," and he'd drop like he'd really been shot.</p>
<p>Now they're adults, and Sonny's the cop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	just a bang-bang rolling off your tongue

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: title is from Carrie Underwood's Little Toy Guns
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing recognizable.
> 
> The timeline is based off if Sonny and Bella are 27 and 26 in 2015. (Personally, I feel they're both closer to the actors' real ages, but whatever, we'll call it creative license.)
> 
> No spoilers aside from a slight bit of Parole Violations.
> 
> As noted in the tags, this is sort of a future-fic, so reader beware.

The game starts when Bella is seven, being chased by boys with angry comments for the Italian blood running in her veins.

 

She manages to escape them by ducking into Ma's bakery. She's too upset to nick a pastry, and goes instead to her hiding spot.

 

Half an hour later, Sonny finds her crying by the back stoop, drapes an arm over her shoulders, doesn't speak. His black eye, bloodied nose speak louder than anything he could say.

 

When she's dried her eyes and wiped her nose on his shirt, they go to the park a few streets over.

 

They pick up sticks shaped like pistols. Bella finds a smooth, star-shaped rock.

 

"Sheriff," Sonny says happily, bowing before her. Then he pops upright, a gleam in his eye. "You'll never take me alive, copper!"

 

Bang-bang! Sonny falls into the leaves, moaning dramatically, wriggling in death throes that make Bella double over laughing.

 

Fast forward two years.

 

Bella still has that rock. Sometimes she pulls it out just to look at it. Sonny had scratched a number, her birthday, into the surface, claiming that all cop's badges had numbers, doesn't she remember Dad's, and she runs her thumb over it.

 

Nine now, she's not as interested in cops-n-robbers. She'd rather spend her time playing with the Barbie dolls Sonny saved up his allowance and paper route money to buy her. But the first time she notices Sonny coming home with an unexplained bruise on his chin, a split lip, and those damn boys following him again, she digs out the sticks, hands him the stone.

 

He passes it back to her, shouting, "I'll never surrender!"

 

Bang-bang! He doesn't make it outside, falling onto the couch and upsetting Gina and Theresa where they're watching some schmoopy teen drama. His dying scene is interrupted by Theresa and Gina dumping him off the couch. He's laughing too hard to be seriously hurt. Bella smiles.

 

Fast forward seven years.

 

Her first serious boyfriend leaves her crying by the side of the road. In a dress with no sleeves in the middle of winter. God, she feels stupid.

 

She only has enough change to call home for two minutes. She gets Sonny and he doesn't let her explain what happened. He just asks where she is, if she's safe, and can she wait ten minutes.

 

Exactly ten minutes later, Sonny picks her up, no questions. His crappy little car barely gets them home where Mom feeds them bocconnottos and Dad pretends he's cleaning his gun 'cause it needs it.

 

Sonny, soon as Bella finishes her second cream puff, takes her by the hand and leads her to her room where he digs through her closet to find the dried, brittle sticks.

 

She pulls out the stone, once again offering it to him. He shakes his head, calls, "Ma, we're going out."

 

She grabs a coat, one of Gina's sparkly things that's more for show than warmth while Sonny dons a discarded scarf of Theresa's.

 

Outside, they head to the park, her feet sinking into drifts so her skirt is billowed out like a hoop skirt.

 

"Madame Sheriff," Sonny says, bowing deeply, stick held loosely in his hand.

 

"This town ain't big enough for the both of us," she says, trying not to giggle. "Now, one of us has got to go, and it ain't gonna be me."

 

"We'll see. I challenge you to a duel at high noon. Ten paces, fire on three."

 

They measure off, stepping exaggeratedly, boots plowing through knee-high snow.

 

"One," Sonny shouts, whipping around. Bella's already facing him.

 

"Two," she calls back.

 

"Three!" They shout together.

 

Bang-bang! Sonny falls backward, dropping into the snow with a muted _whump_. A few seconds later, Bella drops back too, her own _whump_ seeming louder. She lays there, looking up at the sky, wishing she could see the stars.

 

It's cold. But, she feels better. Sonny plops next to her, says, "You only grazed me, Madame Sheriff. How grave is your injury?"

 

"Serious," she tells him. "Feels like a broken heart."

 

"Broken hearts heal," Sonny tells her seriously. Sits up, brushing at the snow sticking to his hair. He offers her his hand. "Truce?"

 

"C'mon, before Ma and Dad send a search party."

 

"Knowing our luck, it'll either be Gina and Theresa and we'll freeze to death waiting for them, or it'll be Dad's old work buddies and we'll be frog-marched home and grounded for life."

 

Bella giggles at that. "How will you get back to college if they ground you?"

 

"I'm not going back to college," Sonny says. And Bella blinks at him. "I'm gonna be a cop, like Dad was."

 

"Oh, Sonny, don't," she sighs. "Please? Remember Ma and all the worrying we did? Are you really gonna put them through that again?"

 

Sonny spreads his hands, both sticks held out like true a Western outlaw. "I wanna help people."

 

Bella takes her stick back. "Well, looks like this town still ain't big enough for the both of us."

 

Sonny mimes shooting her again. Bang-bang. She doesn't fall. He hands his stick to her, helps her up.

 

Silently they walk back home. Bella wonders if it’ll ever be the same again.

 

That night, she puts the sticks in a box, puts the stone in there too. Whispers bang-bang one last time and puts it deep in her closet under Gina's useless coat.

 

Fast forward fifteen more years.

 

Bella's got a beautiful baby girl. Well, the baby's gonna be four this year. There's a new one on the way, though.

 

Sonny was right, broken hearts do heal.

 

Dominique looks just like her uncle, with his wild curls that he has when his hair isn't smothered with product and wide eyes permanent inquisitiveness beholding the world.

 

Currently, Sonny is holding one of the old sticks, hiding behind the couch. Bella's not sure why she'd kept them. Maybe for a moment like this.

 

Dominique has the other. Sometime during the years they played the game, Sonny tied colored string on his gun, red and blue.

 

Dominique has Bella's gun. The star-shaped stone is in her front jumper pocket, and she keeps moving around the furniture gun held how Sonny showed her, calling, "NYPD," every time she catches Sonny scuttling to a new hiding spot.

 

Eventually, she corners him under the dining room table, pressing her gun to his back.

 

Bang-bang! Sonny drops dramatically to the carpet, eyes closed, half-smile curving his lips.

"Didn't you hear, Unkie?" Dominique demands, hitting Sonny with the gun. "Bang! Bang!"

 

He sits up, "Sheriff, that was a mistake. Shooting me once was enough to kill me. Now that you've shot me again, I've come back to life." He chases her on hands and knees, and screaming she runs to Tommy, hiding behind Bella's husband.

 

"Sonny," Tommy says. He bends down, picks up Dominique, and settles her onto his hip. He motions at Sonny to stand up too. As soon as he does, Tommy steals his gun.

 

Bang-bang! Sonny sinks to his knees, a look of utter betrayal on his face.

 

"Tommy," he says hoarsely, and if Bella didn't know better, she'd think Tommy really had shot her brother, that's how good an actor he's become. "I thought you and I were finally getting along."

 

He dies with a soft moan, and Dominique wriggles down to place her ear against his chest.

 

"We have a heartbeat," she declares seriously, and why does her four-year-old seem so serious?

 

When Sonny refuses to 'wake up,' Dominique smacks his chest, saying, "Now I'm doing CPR. Breathe, Unkie, breathe."

 

Obediently Sonny coughs, sitting up so he can wrap an arm around Dominique. She squeals happily. Tommy joins them, both Sonny and Tommy tickling Dominique.

 

"Okay, enough," Bella says, shooing her husband and daughter away from Sonny. "Bath time. Go on. Uncle Sonny'll still be here when you get out."

 

Tommy picks up Dominique, swinging her around and starting to sing a snippet of a marching song he learned from his prison cellmate.

 

"So," Bella says when the room is quiet again.

 

"So," Sonny parrots back.

 

"You’re a lawyer now," she says when the silence stretches.

 

"Yeah. Hey, thanks for not letting me roll over and stay a cop."

 

Bang-bang, she thinks, tracing the healed wound on his arm.

 

"I couldn't spend all that time worrying anymore. At least you're safer as a lawyer. Ma wants you to know Dad would be proud."

 

"He's not who I was trying to impress," Sonny says softly. He gathers both guns, handing the sheriff one to her.

 

Bang-bang.

 

"You, Bella," he says. "I was trying to impress you. I know you lost a lot of respect for me when I dropped out to be a cop."

 

"I never lost respect for you," she says, smacking his arm, the one that hadn't been grazed. "I just wanted to keep you around. Being a cop, Sonny, you're more in danger than if you'd stayed and been a lawyer from the beginning."

 

"Ironic," he says, rubbing ruefully at the spot she'd hit, "then that I only wanted to be a lawyer after I was on the force for a few years."

 

Bang-bang.

 

"Anyway, thanks for giving me the drive to be a better person."

 

"Same," she says.

 

As one, they point the sticks at each other.

 

Bang-bang!

 

~ The End ~


End file.
